Dogs of Walt Disney World

This is going to be a very strange post that probably no one asked for, but I was struck with inspiration on my recent WDW trip with friends. While riding It’s a Small World and admiring the fluffy poodles from the France scene, I started to wonder how many other Disney attractions featured dogs…….. after some googling, the only results I could find were about hot dogs or service dogs, both of which are nice, but not what I was looking for.

So today I present to you – Dogs of Walt Disney World: my account of (mostly) all of the dogs you can find in WDW parks and resorts! I felt that it was my calling as both a Disney and dog lover to write this post. I actually took this pretty seriously (as one should do with dogs) and found out some interesting facts that I hope you’ll enjoy as much as I did! We’ll start off with theme parks…

Magic Kingdom has many attractions with dogs – I bet you can think of a few right off the top of your head!! We’ll start over in Adventureland with Pirates of the Caribbean. Most people probably remember the “prison dog”, but there are actually three dogs on this attraction. First, the dog that perches his little paws on a crate to howl at Jack Sparrow:

This dog also appears in the Pirates movies and was portrayed by two real-life dogs, named Twister and Chopper.

So cute!! According to the Pirates of the Caribbean wiki (I can’t believe those are words I just typed) Chopper had to have some makeup used on his fur to make him look more dirty. What a precious puppy fact.

…but after some research we did find a few actual dogs! Splash Mountain of course has Brer Fox who is closely related to dogs – foxes and domestic dogs are members of the same scientific family Canidae – but he’s not fully a dog in the sense that we’re looking for.

We did, however, find a dog in a place I didn’t think of – he’s kind of near Tom Sawyer Island, and can be seen from both the Liberty Belle Riverboat and the Walt Disney World Railroad:

The man in the first photo is apparently named Beacon Joe, and his model was used in several WDW attractions. I actually found this article about him a really interesting read – and his dog is very cute too!

Also seen from the Liberty Belle Riverboat is this unnamed dog from the Native American village:

Fun fact: I have pet this dog! When I did a Haunted Mansion backstage tour they let us touch almost everything in the ride and I eagerly accepted this as an invitation to pet the dog. Various sources tell me that this dog is named “Boney” or “Bones”. The caretaker and his dog also appear in the Boo to You Parade that takes places during Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party.

A similar dog also appears later in the scene, looking more skeletal than Boney:

For those keeping track, that’s 3 dogs from Pirates, 2 from Frontierland, 5 from Mansion. We’re at 10 total in MK so far. Let’s move on to Fantasyland.

There’s kiiiiiiind of a dog in Enchanted Tales with Belle, sometimes? If there’s enough guests sometimes the Wardrobe will assign the part of the Footstool to someone, and I think he’s technically a dog? But that’s a grey area so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As I mentioned in my intro, It’s a Small World features a very cute dog – a little pink poodle!

This cute pup can be found near the beginning of the ride, with the can-can girls in France. At one point you could even buy a plush of this poodle. She’s so cute, I am such a fan.

It’s a Small World also features a dingo, which was another grey area for me as to whether he should be included – but after some research I learned that a dingo is actually a distinct species separate from dogs!

Continuing on in Fantasyland, we have an obvious one right across the street from It’s a Small World, at Peter Pan’s Flight. Here you’ll find the ever charming and wonderful Nana, the family dog of the Darling children. Nana can be seen both on the ride itself:

Nana is my personal favorite character from Peter Pan and I’m glad she gets showcased so nicely in the attraction. That’s the last dog I could think of in Fantasyland, so we’ll move on to our final stop – Tomorrowland!

One of my favorite dogs in the Magic Kingdom can be found here, at none other than Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress:

It’s Rover, of course!! This loyal pup appears in each scene of Carousel of Progress, remaining adorable all along the way. My favorite scene of his is the last part of the attraction, where he appears with a cute bow around his neck ❤

This robot dog is apparently called “Nipper”, and is leftover from when the ride was formerly sponsored by RCA. Nipper was RCA’s mascot, and when the sponsorship ended, the dog remained! The real Nipper was a Jack Russell Terrier mix and served as an advertising face for the RCA company and remains very popular to this day. Check out how cute the real Nipper is!!

Precious Nipper ❤

Other dogs/dog things present in MK worth noting:

Both Pluto and Goofy are dogs you can meet in Magic Kingdom! Goofy can be found at Pete’s Silly Sideshow in Storybook Circus while Pluto is at the front of the park on Main Street.

While Dumbo the Flying Elephant doesn’t have any dogs present in the attraction, the waiting/play area does have a dog house!

On Main Street, Tony’s Town Square Restaurant is Lady & the Tramp themed!! You can see them in the windows and they also have a beautiful fountain inside as well. Also outside, on the pavement in front of the restaurant, are their little pawprints inside a heart ❤

I don’t consider Stitch a dog, but if you do – he does have an attraction as well, in Tomorrowland. I don’t consider it to be a very good attraction, but there you go.

Magic Kingdom features many dogs, but we still have more to go! Moving right along to my favorite, Epcot!

We’ll start off in Future World! Spaceship Earth does feature a dog in some of the “Beginning of Your Future” animations at the end of the ride. But not every scene has a furry friend (much to my dismay!)

An attraction that does consistently feature a dog is Living with the Land!

This dog looks very similar to the dog from Pirates of the Caribbean – I believe I was once told they were modeled using the same animatronic, but don’t quote me on that fact 😉

Moving back to World Showcase – next up is one of my favorites in all of Walt Disney World. This attraction happens to contain more dogs than any other – we’re heading to Impressions de France!

I had a hard time finding any photos of the Impressions de France dogs, so I had to go take some myself. There are two that I know of that I was unable to get a photo of because they appear so briefly, but rest assured that this attraction has more dogs than any other in WDW. If you care to follow along and find the dogs yourself, I’m also including this really good recording of the show – it’s not quite like watching it in person of course, but it’s a nice visual aid for the purposes of this post.

Our first doggy appearance is perhaps my favorite – early on in the film we see an AMAZING!!!! group of beautiful hunting Beagles trotting along, it’s difficult to count them here but I would say there are at least 20-25 dogs in this scene. They appear around 4:27 in the video.

Also I brightened these photos a little so you could see just how many doggies there are!! If anyone would like to attempt to count the total number of dogs in this scene please let me know what number you come up with.

Our next dog appears from at about 5:52-6:05. I think it looks a lot like an Irish Setter but the breed is unclear. This pupper appears on the left side, walking with his/her owner:

Next we have one of the dogs that I didn’t manage to get a photo of because he appears SO quickly! You can’t even see it in the video there but it’s at the start of the Versailles section – the specific part is about 7:45. The dog appears on the very leftmost screen, walking away from the camera with his owner. This is one you’ll have to see in person to find!!

The next dog is a bit further along but it’s another one of my favorites. It appears in the scene with the couple walking on the cliff – the scene starts around 14:54 but the dog doesn’t actually appear in that video until about 15:00, and it’s very hard to see. Lucky for you, I got a photo (which is not very good quality, however):

It looks like a small blob, but it is a dog! A small black poodle, it looks like.

And our final dog I unfortunately do not have a photo of either – she was just too quick!! This dog appears in the initial Eiffel Tower shot and again is not visible in the video. She’s in the bottom of the screen that’s second from the right, walking with her owner and they appear for only a few seconds. You’ll have to visit Impressions de France to see this dog 🙂 As an aside – I genuinely adore this attraction. It really is one of my favorite things in Epcot or any park, for that matter. This article from Theme Park Insider really explains well my feelings for this film, and I found it a really interesting and well-written piece!

So… if you assume that the first scene has 25 dogs, that brings us to a total of 29 dogs in this attraction, and 30 dogs in Epcot overall! No wonder this is my favorite park 😉

The only other attractions for which I was unsure about dog content were Reflections of China and O Canada, so I watched both and did not find any! I was particularly surprised at Canada – I thought I had remembered a dog sledding scene, but my mind had deceived me. Also, Epcot features one dog character meet & greet – Goofy, at the Character Spot.

Also, during the Flower & Garden Festival you can find a beautiful Lady & the Tramp topiary, usually around Italy:

Of course I’m referring to our friend on the right side there – Toto from the Great Movie Ride, which closed permanently on August 13. I really, really love The Wizard of Oz – the first major fight I ever had with Chris was because he said he didn’t like the movie – so I always loved seeing little Toto on GMR. Obviously he’s not included in our official list since the ride is closed but I thought he deserved a mention!

It’s also worth mentioning that outside among the celebrity foot- and handprints are some puppies – “Perdy” of 101 Dalmatians is there, and I believe Lassie is too. No word on if these tiles will remain once the ride is changed, but I hope they do!

The only other attraction that somewhat has a dog is Toy Story Mania, which has Slinky Dog on the side of one of the cars – but he’s not really explicitly featured. Of course we have the Slinky Dog coaster opening soon with the addition of Toy Story Land though, so that will definitely be full of dogs I’m sure!!

Not in an attraction, but I also noticed a few doggies along Hollywood Boulevard in the park:

And… I’m pretty sure… that’s all the dogs in Studios? Again please let me know if I missed any – I think there might be some in One Man’s Dream or similar attractions but I haven’t been properly to Studios in ages so I’d have to double check! The people of the world need to know every possible dog available for viewing in WDW, ok

Finally, we can move on to Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and this is actually going to be quite brief because I can’t think of many dogs there??????

One actual dog you can find, though, is on Kilimanjaro Safaris! In the past few years they unveiled a beautiful new enclosure for African painted dogs:

I’ve seen these doggos a few times on safari now and they are really cute and beautiful – according to the Disney Parks Blog their patterns are all unique, like human fingerprints. That link to the blog post announcing their debut actually has a lot of cool facts and info, I’d definitely give it a read if you’re interested!

That’s actually the only dog I could think of at Animal Kingdom, aside from the meet & greets with Pluto and Goofy. Weird since it’s Animal Kingdom…needs more dogs imo!

That’s all for the theme parks – next I have a few resorts to touch on. This part won’t be quite as long and I won’t go through every resort…obviously! But there are a few very notable resort doggies that I had to include, starting with Disney’s All-Star Movies! They have an entire section in this hotel themed as 101 Dalmatians – this would have been a DREAM for little Kaela, as I was obsessed with that movie when I was little!!

The other hotel I have to highlight is one I’m very familiar with as I used to work there – Disney’s Pop Century Resort! In the 1950s section, two buildings feature massively scaled versions of Lady & the Tramp – they’re so cute!!

Unless I’m mistaken, that pretty much covers all the dogs of Walt Disney World…. Of course, you may see dogs of another kind when visiting – service dogs are of course welcome at WDW and I see them every day working in the park 🙂 And that’s all for my silly, completely ridiculous list of dogs to be found at WDW!

I really hope you enjoyed this ridiculous and insane post haha. I had so much fun writing it, researching everything, and discovering some new doggies along the way. Did I miss any?? It’s been a while since I’ve been on some of these attractions so it’s definitely possible that I missed some, or that there’s some random ambient dogs floating around somewhere in the parks! What is your favorite Disney dog? I think mine have to be Rover from Carousel of Progress or the little fluffy black poodle in Impressions de France…but there are so many good options, you can’t go wrong!!!

Thanks for reading as always!! I’ve never written anything quite as weird as this so I can’t really recommend any similar posts lol but I do have lots of other Disney-related content if you’re looking for some more reading material 🙂 xo!